Monthly Archives: September 2012 − News & Stories

The recent ice development is more than interesting and it is well worth to have a look at the latest icechart. It is a long time ago since there has been similarly little ice in the northeast Atlantic, and one can only hope that the near future will see more ice again near the coasts of Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land after the usual seasonal minimum in late September.

While Norway’s public attention was focussed on the process against assassin Breivik, the Norwegian oil giant Statoil has announced more explorative activity for 2013. 2 or 3 explorative wells are planned for the Hoop field, 250 km north of Sørøya which is near Norway’s North Cape, are planned for the 2013 season. The well are just a good 100 nautical miles southeast of Bear Island.

The swift progress is met with critizism by environmental organisations: the Hoop field is not far from the seasonal ice edge and the ecologically very important polar front, but far from capacities in case of accidents and oil spills.

Spitsbergen’s hotels and guesthouses have had 11,200 overnights in July 2012, near 2/3 of these connected to tourism. 56 % of the guests were Norwegian, 8 % less than in July 2011, which means that international tourism has seen a relative increase of importance.

38,500 passengers have visited Spitsbergen during the 2012 season, a growth of 75 % compared to 2011. The growth is within the sector of bigger oversea cruise ships, which are significantly increasing in size. The number of ship visits has remained relatively constant, and so did the number of passengers and ships within the sector of small expedition cruise ships.

An average growth of 41 % is reported from other ports in northern Norway.

Last week a small sailingboat cruising the north coast of Spitsbergen sank after it got into shallow water. The two 70 year old english sailers could be rescued by helicopter after they had spent two hours in their rubber life boat. Due to a technical defect, they could not use their life raft. Finally they managed to inflate a rubber boat which was also on board. Despite real bad flying conditions and snowfall the helicopter could transfer the sailers to Longyearbyen hospital.

The shallows near the mouth of Raudfjord are clearly marked on nautical charts.

On Sunday (September 02), there was a weak submarine earthquake, force 5.2 on the Richter scale. It was too weak to make itself felt in the settlements of Spitsbergen. If at all, then an alert observer in Ny Ålesund, the settlement nearest the epicentre, might have observed the ground motion.

Two days earlier, there was a stronger earthquake near Jan Mayen, which was clearly felt at the station on Jan Mayen and caused some minor damage. The middle oceanic ridge between Spitsbergen and Greenland is a constant source for frequent earthquakes, but only rarely stronger ones. Spitsbergen itself is not an earthquake zone, except a minor earthquake zone in Storfjord, and earthquakes strong enough to be observed by people are rare events.

These geological faults in Billefjord were responsible for strong earthquakes in the geological past. Today, they are silent.

Polar bear alarm systems for camps are a nuisance: essential for safety unless you have a reliable polar dog or enough manpower to handle a nightwatch, but currently hard to obtain locally in Longyearbyen. In October 2011, this page reported about a British system made and distributed by Arctic Limited. First user reports are now available.

Next to the fact that the system from Arctic Ltd. is, in contrast to other ones, easily available, it has several advantages in comparison to other systems which have commonly been used in Spitsbergen until recently. With older systems, the one-way components (the bangers) were the heavy and expensive parts. With the system from Arctic Ltd., the heavy and (relatively) expensive parts are the trigger mechanisms, which last forever. The bangers are blank cartridges: shot cartridges deprived of the shot, so they are cheap and lightweight and can be carried in numbers. This is useful, as it is hard to avoid occasional unintended triggering (wind, inobservance, reindeer, …).

User reports agree that the bang should be louder. According to Arctic Ltd., special bangers are available that meet this demand. Another question is that of the ideal string, which should be as thin as possible to be invisible for polar bears and to avoid unintended triggering. It has, however, to be very strong and it should not be elastic (then a bear might feel it before the system triggers).

Strong posts are essential for reliable functioning. For the author, aluminium pipes have served the purpose well. Reliable anchoring to the outside of the camp with thin cords and tent pegs or heavy stones is also critical, otherwise pulling the string may bend the posts rather than trigger the bangers.

Two sets of triggers and strings, one higher and one lower on the same set of posts around the camp, will also increase safety noticeably.

The importance of properly setting up a good system must not be understimated, as is shown by the deadly attach of a polar bear on a British camp in Spitsbergen in August 2011 (see reports on these pages).

Polar bear alarm system from Arctic Ltd., attached to an aluminium pipe with cable connectors and strong tape.

The Norwegian Meteorological institute is following the drift ice development in the arctic since 30 years now, and similar institutions in other arctic nations do the same with similar results: there has never been less ice than there is now. Even in September 2007, the minimum year so far, there was more ice than now. There are about 3 million square kilometres ice less than in 1979, an area 8 times larger than Norway (without Spitsbergen).

It is not only the area that is lost, but also the change in quality that makes experts worry. In the past, arctic sea ice used to be largely of large, strong, thick floes multi-year ice. These have largely disappeared. Now, most of the ice consists of much thinner one-year ice, which does not compare to the stronger, older ice in thickness, stability and as a habitat for the arctic ecosystem.

The drift ice is currently far north from any coast in the Spitsbergen archipelago, but the ice loss is far more dramatic on the other side of the arctic, north of western arctic Canada, Alaska and Siberia.

Ice in Hinlopen Strait, mid July 2005.This year, the area is completely ice free.